Dungeon World and the Difficult Situation
On running Dungeon World, I confirmed my suspicion that one thing that really makes it shine in play is the fact that it never shifts out of a discussion mode and into a wargame or board game mode. In most traditional RPGs, once combat starts, the objectives become almost exlcusively reducing your opponent to 0HP before the same happens to you. In Dungeon World, I found that the same flow of hard choices continued into combat, which was very satisfying.
However, from my actual play experience, I found a secondary aspect of the game quite appealing too. Dungeon World has a simple system, which can be boiled down to roll 2d6 and add a modifer. 6+ is failure, 7-9 is success with a cost. 10+ is success. As many people have already discussed, the 7-9 result is a core aspect of the *World games in that it keeps the narrative rich, complex and compelling for the players, as there is a constant stream of compromises, costs and choices that result from play that build on each other. The PCs often find themselves in difficult situations, frequently of their own making.
That is all well and good, but that's not the whole of it. DW's high probability of success, with the accompanying high probability of cost (which is not necessarily injury or death), means that when the PCs find themselves in a difficult situation, they can often get themselves out of it. And by doing so, they often set up for the next difficult situation. One result of this second aspect, which I didn't foresee, is that it encouraged me as a GM to follow through those difficult situations that the PCs put themselves in. In many RPGs, I am often reluctant to do this as the "kill or be killed" nature of combat tends to be final, meaning that those scenes result in reducing the drama/complexity once resolved. As a result, these scenes are generally reserved for the end of the story. In DW, playing through those scenes increases the dram/complexity once resolved.
To give an example from yesterday, one PC decided to confront an entire crew of pirates, who had his brother held captive. The resulting chaos saw them both survive (at considerable cost) and the pirates vanquished. And it raised all kinds of drama between the two PCs, leading to a very dramatic scene later in the game, where the PC who saved his brother abandoned him instead. In some other RPGs, the fatal nature of this scene would have had me as a GM look for ways to avoid it. Another example was a PC who tried to backstab the big bad, a very powerful sorcerer, in the middle of the scenario. I gave him a chance to succeed knowing that I had ways to reflect the consequences of failure without necessarily killing the PC. This also led to the PC having to compromise with another PC to deal with those consequences, which ultimately led to the PC's dramatic climax.
So, another reason that DW appeals to me is that it encourages the flow of play of putting PCs into difficult situations and then getting them out. Out of the frying pan and into the fire over and over again.
However, from my actual play experience, I found a secondary aspect of the game quite appealing too. Dungeon World has a simple system, which can be boiled down to roll 2d6 and add a modifer. 6+ is failure, 7-9 is success with a cost. 10+ is success. As many people have already discussed, the 7-9 result is a core aspect of the *World games in that it keeps the narrative rich, complex and compelling for the players, as there is a constant stream of compromises, costs and choices that result from play that build on each other. The PCs often find themselves in difficult situations, frequently of their own making.
That is all well and good, but that's not the whole of it. DW's high probability of success, with the accompanying high probability of cost (which is not necessarily injury or death), means that when the PCs find themselves in a difficult situation, they can often get themselves out of it. And by doing so, they often set up for the next difficult situation. One result of this second aspect, which I didn't foresee, is that it encouraged me as a GM to follow through those difficult situations that the PCs put themselves in. In many RPGs, I am often reluctant to do this as the "kill or be killed" nature of combat tends to be final, meaning that those scenes result in reducing the drama/complexity once resolved. As a result, these scenes are generally reserved for the end of the story. In DW, playing through those scenes increases the dram/complexity once resolved.
To give an example from yesterday, one PC decided to confront an entire crew of pirates, who had his brother held captive. The resulting chaos saw them both survive (at considerable cost) and the pirates vanquished. And it raised all kinds of drama between the two PCs, leading to a very dramatic scene later in the game, where the PC who saved his brother abandoned him instead. In some other RPGs, the fatal nature of this scene would have had me as a GM look for ways to avoid it. Another example was a PC who tried to backstab the big bad, a very powerful sorcerer, in the middle of the scenario. I gave him a chance to succeed knowing that I had ways to reflect the consequences of failure without necessarily killing the PC. This also led to the PC having to compromise with another PC to deal with those consequences, which ultimately led to the PC's dramatic climax.
So, another reason that DW appeals to me is that it encourages the flow of play of putting PCs into difficult situations and then getting them out. Out of the frying pan and into the fire over and over again.